In the question betwixt a master and a servant, we must distinguish betwixt benefits, duties, and actions ministerial. By _benefits_, we understand those good offices that we receive from strangers, which are voluntary, and may be forborne without blame. _Duties_ are the parts of a son and wife, and incumbent upon kindred and relations. _Offices ministerial_ belong to the part of a servant. Now, since it is the _mind_, and not the _condition_ of a person, that prints the value upon the benefit, a servant may oblige his master, and so may a subject his sovereign, or a common soldier his general, by doing more than he is expressly bound to do. Some things there are, which the law neither commands nor forbids; and here the servant is free. It would be very hard for a servant to be chastised for doing less than his duty, and not thanked for it when he does more. His body, it is true, is his master’s, but his mind is his own: and there are many commands which a servant ought no more to obey than a master to impose. There is no man so great, but he may both need the help and service, and stand in fear of the power and unkindness, even of the meanest of mortals. One servant kills his master; another saves him, nay, preserves his master’s life, perhaps, with the loss of his own: he exposes himself to torment and death; he stands firm against all threats and batteries: which is not only a benefit in a servant, but much the greater for his being so.